The New Children’s Museum’s next major exhibition, “FEAST! The Art of Playing With Your Food,” is set to open Oct. 13. Like the museum’s previous theme exhibition, “Trash,” which opened in October, 2011, it will fill the entire downtown museum with art based on a single theme.

Curated by the museum’s Lauren Lockhart, it will comprise interactive work by nearly a dozen artists based on the topics of food, health, agriculture, family heritage, community and the environment.

“Through this new exhibition, we will continue to inspire creativity, imagination and critical thinking in children and families through contemporary art,” said Julianne Markow, the museum’s executive director. “The museum’s education team is working with each artist to ensure that children of all ages are not only able to engage in open-ended play with and on the works of art, but also that they will find myriad ways to learn from the artwork and develop new skills.”

The exhibition promises to employ “every available medium from video and sound to painting and sculpture,” and uses local, regional and national artists. Some of their artwork is now under development in the museum’s “Test Kitchen,” which is open to the public through April 13.

Here are the artists contracted (so far) to produce works for “FEAST!”:

FriendsWithYou

Project: Enchanted Fruits (Tentative title)

The 11-year-old, Los Angeles-based collaborative comprised of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III describes its sole purpose as “spreading the positive message of Magic, Luck, and Friendship... FriendsWithYou’s mission is to affect world culture by cultivating special moments of spiritual awareness and powerful, joyous interaction.” At NCM, that interaction will take place with large, inflated fruits and other foods.

A UC San Diego graduate now based in New York City, Karre is a former member of the percussion ensemble red fish blue fish and now perform with ICE (the International Contemporary Ensemble, which is guided by MacArthur fellow Claire Chase and includes UC San Diego’s Steven Schick as a frequent guest artist). He is also an accomplished video artist and editor and is now collaborating with composer Roger Reynolds on his new work based on the life of George Washington commissioned by the National Symphony. His installation will create a hybrid kitchen/recording studio.

Credits: BBC Scotland (Glasgow Concert Halls), Miller Theatre in New York, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Park Avenue Armory in New York.

Marisol Rendon

Project: Wobbleland

The San Diego-based Rendon, who studied at Claremont Graduate University and is Assistant Professor of Art at Southwestern College, Chula Vista, had a previous, highly successful work at the California Center for the Arts Escondido that was comprised of giant vegetables. For this exhibition, Rendon will create an oversized kitchen sink, filled with large scraps of food. Expect children to climb in.

Credits: Museum of Art of Pereira in Colombia, California Center for Arts in Escondido, CA and Caldas Museum of Art in Colombia, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Market Gallery in Los Angeles, Noel-Baza Fine Art and Track 16 Gallery (Santa Monica).

Phil Ross

Project: Mol_d

A graduate of Stanford University and the San Francisco Art Institute who now teaches at the University of San Francisco, Ross will fashion approximately 1000 building blocks made of mushrooms (using a process he’s developed over a decade of experimentation).

Credits: MacDowell Colony Fellow, Artist in Residence at the University of Western Australia, The Exploratorium and The Headlands Center for the Arts; exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in Russia, Museum of Craft And Folk Art in San Francisco, Newcomb Art Gallery in New Orleans, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and The Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Tattfoo Tan

Projects: 5PM and Nature Matching System

The Nature Matching System is a large-scale mural of 88 pantone colors associated with a fruit or a vegetable (place mats with the grid are available on Tattfoo’s website). As for 5PM, the New York-based artist will construct a chicken coop housing five chickens (aka PMs, or poop machines) outside the museum.

Credits: Annual Award for Excellence in Design for a public design commission in the City of New York; solo exhibitions at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, Peng Gallery in Philadelphia and Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York.

Jason Torchinsky

Project: Food Truckin’

The Los Angeles-based Torchinsky will create a set of “customizable vehicles” that will allow children to assemble, pack and ship food.

Credits: Machine Project, blogger for Jalopnik.

WORKac

Project: Urban Aqualoop

WORKac is a New York-based architectural firm founded by Dan Wood and Amale Andraos that will build an “interactive installation integrating natural cycles with real food production infrastructure in an innovative form that invites exploration.” The structure will contain “a closed-loop food production system; a functional, aquaponic fish and vegetable farm.”

Credits: Finalist for a National Design Award and in 2008; identified by Icon Magazine as one of the 25 most-influential new architecture firms in the world; projects include the first Edible Schoolyard in New York City with chef Alice Waters, headquarters and retail complex for Diane Von Furstenberg, the master plan for the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cultural District, museum extension for Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, temporary urban farm installation at MOMA’S PS1 Contemporary Art Center and transformable art interiors at New York City’s Children’s Museum of the Arts.